


Misunderstandings

by Skalidra



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Demons, Civilian Jason Todd, Demon Deals, M/M, Manipulation, Possibly Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-15
Updated: 2019-09-15
Packaged: 2020-10-19 06:31:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20652743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skalidra/pseuds/Skalidra
Summary: Jason's really done his best to turn his life around. He's not ashamed of what he did and who he fell in with growing up, considering it kept him alive, but he's trying to move past that. Finally get his GED, maybe go to college, get a real job... Which is why his current situation — caught in the middle of a gang fight — is not exactly the best turn of fate. There's no way out, though, is there?





	Misunderstandings

**Author's Note:**

> (Hi! I'm alive, I swear. Just, ran into a deadzone of fics, and instead of pushing myself to continue to blast out more and burn out, decided to take things slower and just post something when ready.) This is for the final week of the JayTim Month-ish, happening over on Tumblr. Prompt is Urban Fantasy. Have fun!

Jason’s made a lot of choices in his life that have been pretty fucked up, he fully admits that. And usually, he’s pretty okay with most of them. There are things he regrets, but he made it out off Gotham’s streets and he’s still alive, so everything he’s had to do, all the choices he’s had to make, he counts them as necessary.

What he sold, kept him fed when nothing else would. What he’s done, gave him a job when no one else would take him. Maybe people got hurt, and maybe he wishes he could change that, but he’s still breathing when a lot of the other kids he knew aren’t, and he finds it hard to imagine any other path he could have taken to get the same result.

He’s away from it now, at least as much as he can be. He has an actual job — under the counter, and minimum at that, but whatever — he’s working on getting enough studying done that he can get a GED, so all the years of high school he missed just trying to survive will stop mattering. He’s getting his life together, piece by piece.

Which is why it stings that his current situation is not remotely his fault.

Handcuffs tight around his wrists, wrenched high behind his back and looped through one of the dismayingly sturdy decorative struts of the bar he was just having a nice, calm drink at before the world went to shit around him. It’s gang territory, but everywhere in lower Gotham is, and frankly, he didn’t think anything of it because he’s been here before, plenty of times.

Except some asshole recognized him from some job practically half a decade back, pulled a knife, and then, because Jason’s luck isn’t shitty enough, it turns out that this is the night that everyone’s in this stupid bar. A group from the Maronis, and a group from Falcones he used to belong to, immediately leaping to his defense. More knives, then fucking guns, and when the police finally show up Jason’s the only one left in the bar, standing over two dead men with all the rest of the violence spilled out into the street. It's not enough to get him immediately shot, but it's enough to get him dragged to the bar and cuffed to it before the officer runs back out to deal with everything else. What _will_ be enough to fuck him over is the little inked rose sitting on his collarbone, from when he was young and stupid and needed to prove his loyalty to the only people that were interested in helping a small Gotham street rat.

Gang violence, mob tattoo, dead men. Easy lines to draw. With his priors, even if they were all when he was still a minor, it's not a difficult argument to make that he just stepped things up a notch.

_Fuck_, everything was going so well. Now, even if someone comes to 'convince' the police to drop whatever charges they press, that means owing, owing means favors, and favors mean getting dragged back into the whole family that he did his best to leave behind. He has to get out of this before anyone comes back. Unspoken Gotham rules; if he's not here when the cops come back, he doesn't get officially arrested. They'd rather draw the cleanest lines they can, and that doesn't involve hunting down some runner. Not unless one of the bosses asks them to.

He curses out loud, twisting his wrists against the cuffs and trying to fold a hand tight enough to get out. It's been a long time since he slipped cuffs, and his hands were a lot smaller, and a lot more malleable. He's not carrying any kind of a pick with him, either, which only feels like a stupid decision now that he actually needs one. Maybe that's one habit he shouldn't let himself fall out of.

"Having a little trouble?"

Jason's head snaps up, gaze skimming around the wrecked bar until he finds a young, relatively small man leaning against the corner that leads to the bathrooms. Perfectly fitting black suit and red tie, like one of the family's sons except that none of them would set foot in a place like this, especially not after a fight that got the cops called.

Also, Jason's never seen him before, and he's glimpsed at least most of the family heads, even if just from a distance. Pale skin, shiny black hair to his jaw that's tucked behind an ear on one side, and cool, amused blue eyes, on a face that at a glance Jason would probably call pretty. He's absolutely certain this stranger didn't come through the bar tonight, because he would have noticed if he had, and probably tried for something. If he could get over the caution that suit inspires in him, at least.

So where the fuck did he come from? There's no secondary exit near the bathrooms; it's back through the whole employee area, only accessible from behind the bar. There's a window in there but not even this guy could possibly be skinny enough to get through it. It takes a kid. He'd know.

"Who the hell are you?" he asks, trying to get any clue off the suit, or the looks.

"That's really just a smear campaign," is the completely nonsensical answer. The man pushes off the wall, and begins to pick his way through the mess towards him, somehow avoiding every bit of glass and blood scattered across the floor with his perfect, shiny shoes. "You can call me Tim, if you want. If I get to call you Jason."

He jerks hard enough that he feels the skin on one of his wrists tear, but that's not nearly as important to him right now as demanding, "How the fuck do you know my name?!"

"I'm good at that," 'Tim' answers, sounding entirely unphased by the raised voice. "Knowing things, getting things done. It’s my specialty.” One final step puts him just in front of Jason, and his head lifts then, to look him right in the eye. "It looks like you could use a bit of that."

What the hell is he? Some kind of fixer? Then why would he even be here? Jason sure as hell doesn’t have the money to pay that kind of fee, so no use soliciting him, and none of the bosses are going to care enough about him to pay it for him. Not without putting him in what might as well be indentured servitude to pay it back. Might as well just take the arrest, at that point.

“What are you—? What do you mean?”

Tim leans sideways, peering at the cuffs holding him to the bar. “I can get you out of those. Get you out of this bar too; no evidence you were ever even here. If that’s something you want.”

Jason shifts, glancing towards the door. Of fucking course he wants that, but, “What’s the price?”

He’s been luckier than a lot of the friends he had growing up, but he knows he’s not lucky enough to get some random, richly dressed man to show up and offer to get him off the hook, for nothing. This will cost something. Things like this always cost something. Getting off the street cost something, getting to be part of a family cost something. It always _costs_.

Tim smiles, and straightens back up. Hands lift, and Jason grunts a protest but it doesn’t stop them gripping the lapels of his jacket, smoothing them out. “Oh… Not much.” He looks up, and there’s a flicker of red in his eyes, overtaking the blue, glowing bright and swirling into the depths— And gone, just like that.

Jason stares.

Tim pats his chest, and he doesn’t realize a hand has slipped into his pocket till it comes out with the carton of cigarettes there. Thin fingers pluck one from inside, tucking the rest back into his jacket pocket. “I’m sure we can figure out something that feels fair,” he says, just before snapping his fingers and lighting the cigarette with a thread of blue flame.

Okay. Alright, either… Either Jason got knocked unconscious or shot or something and he’s having one hell of a hallucination, or — he swallows, stares at the lit cigarette in the man’s hand — the world is not what he thought it was. Or there’s some kind of practical magic going on, which somehow feels like the most outlandish option between all three.

He almost laughs at the idea that his brain finds it easier to think that this ‘Tim’ is a _something,_ rather than a magician. What the hell?

He swallows what feels like compulsively, staring at the cigarette as Tim lifts it, eyeing the smoke like he finds it fascinating. “What are you?”

“Your kind usually calls mine demons,” is the frank answer, unconcerned. “We’re not actually from hell, though, just a different dimension that tends to be unfriendly to humans. Coming here gives us… more opportunity.” One eyebrow arches in question, as Tim holds the cigarette up in offering.

Jason hesitates. “Is it going to cost me my soul?”

Tim smiles, shakes his head, and Jason could swear there’s a hint of fang there. “No. No souls; I don’t deal in those. Risk's not worth the reward.”

“But you deal?”

Another flicker of red in his eyes. “I do.” The occupied hand gestures towards somewhere in the middle of him, leaving a thin trail of smoke in the air. “I can get you out of those handcuffs, and out of this bar. Nobody will even remember you were here. What do you think?”

Jason twists his hands against the cuffs, wincing slightly when his wrist reminds him that he already tore the skin on it with a sharp flash of pain. “Deals with demons don’t have the best reputation,” he points out, and maybe his voice comes out a little hysterical. He’s got the fucking right to that, doesn’t he? _Demons_?

Tim makes a sort of noncommittal noise, and a scrunched face that more or less matches. “To be fair, the only people that publicize they made deals with my kind are the ones that weren’t happy with it. There have been millions of deals struck over the centuries your kind has lived; most you’ve never heard about and never will.” A shrug, fingers twisting the cigarette between them, narrowing avoiding the embers of the lit end. “I’m not saying some of us aren’t assholes, but we’ve been mostly misrepresented in media.”

“Misrepresented as the servants of the Devil?” comes out of his mouth, around the edges of a laugh that he viciously strangles back down his throat before it can get all the way out. "Oh yeah, just a misunderstanding, sure."

“Hey, I'm not judging you for the actions of the worst of your race, am I? Just saying, if there really is a God, or a Devil, we certainly don’t work for either of them. We’re here for our own gain.”

Jason feels like his head is spinning. “Your gain? Like what?”

Tim shrugs. “I just like it here, personally? The deals I’ve made before have been to help me stay, not to trick people into selling me their souls, or any of that. That's all I'm offering now, too. You let me stay with you in this dimension, and in exchange, you walk away clean from all this. No evidence you were ever here, and no charges. Ever.”

“What does that mean, ‘let me stay with you’? What, like, in my apartment?”

“Yes, like that.”

“_Why?_”

Tim considers him for a couple moments, then sighs and drops the cigarette, grinding it out under a heel. There's what looks like guilt on his face, which is honestly making Jason's head hurt a bit, trying to wrap his head around that idea. A demon, _guilty_. “Well, I’m not really supposed to be here. I don’t have permission, which means I'm trying to stay under the radar of… everyone. if I hide in the shadow of a human with a naturally powerful soul, I can’t be sensed.”

“Like who, me? _I’ve _got a naturally powerful soul?” Tim smiles, and Jason shakes his head. “No, you’ve gotta be wrong. I’m not anyone special.”

“You don’t have to be special to have a powerful soul; it just is.” He glances towards the door of the bar, head tilting as if he’s listening to something. “We don’t have that much more time; the shootout’s done.”

“Shit.” Jason tugs against the cuffs again, twisting against the decorative strut of the bar, trying to see if there’s anything to slip, or break, or any way at all he can get out of this. But there’s not; he knew that before.

Tim watches. Then, when he stills, offers, “Look, I know my kind aren’t exactly known for being trustworthy, but I’m not trying anything. This one’s a simple deal; you let me stay with you, hide under your soul, and I get you out of this bar and make sure no one ties you back to this whole thing. Like you were never here. That’s it.”

Okay, so… Let a demon stay in his apartment, let him hide under his ‘powerful soul,’ and dodge all of this mess with the police. He can go back to his life; plus a new roommate, anyway. No favors to the mob, no getting dragged back into that whole part of his life, no giving up on the fresh start he’s been building. And he can always figure out some way to get away from ‘Tim’ later, if he needs to, right? Stories might be ‘misrepresentation,’ but surely some of all that is true. Exorcisms or something.

Or, he’s gone fucking crazy and he’s going to wake up in a jail cell or a hospital regardless.

Well, if it’s a hallucination it’s one hell of an imaginative one for his brain to cook up, and there’s no harm in going along with it. If it’s not… Jason bites his lip, glancing towards the door again, then to the two dead men on the floor. He _can’t _take the fall for this. He can’t have that kind of an arrest on his record, even if all the rest of what he fears doesn’t happen. It has to be worth it.

He digs his nails into his palms, and meets Tim’s eyes. “Alright. Deal.”

Tim smiles. Then he steps forward, hands lifting to take either side of his face. There’s strength in the thin fingers that doesn’t make sense, and when he lifts up on his toes and pulls down, Jason’s got no choice but to bend forward and meet the kiss. He’s warm, lips soft and altogether human feeling, as far as Jason can tell. A hand scrapes back through his hair, gripping tight enough he feels his scalp protest in a not entirely unpleasant way. Then Tim bites.

Jason flinches, hissing and automatically trying to pull away, but the hand at the back of his head won’t let him. He’s bleeding, he can feel it. A tongue swipes over his split lip, and Tim kisses him again, deeper and with the sharp taste of copper between them.

Despite the pain, when Tim pulls away Jason still tries to chase. Before he draws up hard against the cuffs still holding him to the bar. Tim licks his lips, and Jason can see now that he’s bleeding too, from somewhere near the corner of his mouth.

“Sealed in word, touch, and blood,” he murmurs, hands sliding down to stroke down his sides. An odd warmth follows the path of his fingers. “You have a deal, Jason Todd.”

He can’t help the shiver that slides down his spine, feeling something in his chest tighten and loosen and warm all at once..He can’t— He doesn’t have a description that does it justice.

Tim steps away, and snaps his fingers. The cuffs fall open with a clatter.

Jason brings his arms forward automatically, carefully stretching the ache in his shoulders as he sucks in a breath in surprise. Tim smiles, and his eyes flicker red as he waves a hand towards one corner of the room. Something crackles and _pops_ with the same kind of sharp suddenness as a lightbulb blowing.

“Cuffs are loose, the security system is fried, and when I’m done, no one will remember you were here tonight.” The red fades away, and the smile twitches a little further upwards. “You’re free to go. Take the back exit; it’ll be unlocked. I’ll handle the rest.”

He takes a careful step away from the bar, half expecting to get brought up short anyway, to have everything suddenly snap back into place. It doesn’t. This… This is real. It’s all real.

His breath feeling shallow, his chest tight, Jason runs.

* * *

It takes getting all the way back to his apartment for Jason to stop looking over his shoulder for a cop car, or for a small, lean man in a black suit. It’s almost enough distance and space for him to reconsider that he might have just gotten drugged somehow or hit upside the head in the fight, but his lip is still split when he stands in front of his mirror, and there’s torn skin on one of his wrists from the cuffs that stings fiercely as he washes his hands.

He just needs… He needs a glass of water, and a shower, and some sleep. And surely, everything will make sense in the morning. It’ll either be a weird fever dream, or he’ll at least have more energy to deal with the fact that he made a deal with a demon. Jesus, he made a _deal with a demon_. How can that be real?

The water’s easy enough, poured in a glass and carried with him into the bathroom, where he flips the water on to start to heat before stripping down. It feels good, leeches the tension out of his shoulders and makes him relax, his head bent under the spray and the only sound the water crashing down against the tiles. He stands there for a few long minutes, easing into all of it, before he finally takes a deep breath and straightens up to actually wash the whole night off his skin.

He lathers up the soap between his hands, rubs it down his arms and chest, lifting each to get at his sides and the black, tattooed sigi—

His back hits the wall of the shower hard enough to knock the bottles off their precarious ledge, sending them crashing to the floor and almost drowning out his shout of, "What the _fuck_?!"

There are _tattoos_ down his side. Both sides. Dark, complicated looking lines of tiny sigils that he most definitely did not fucking have this morning. They stretch from midway down his ribs to just above his hips in more or less straight lines, maybe an inch across at the widest points. What the _hell?_

A few frantic twists confirms that there aren’t any others on him, but scrubbing at one of the lines doesn’t get him anything but reddened skin. Not fake. Not coming off. _Fuck_.

Jason gets out of the shower, leaving the bottles on the tile as he quickly drags a towel through his hair and then wraps it around his waist. He needs to call someone. He needs an explanation for what the hell these are and what they mean. He needs… What, an exorcist? A priest? Who’s he supposed to talk to about random demonic sigils appearing on his skin after he made a deal with a demon?

Or is that just a regular — hah, like any of this is fucking _regular_ — part of demon contracts? Like, ‘get it in writing’ except the writing is on his skin and nothing he actually understands. That doesn’t sound totally impossible.

He’s halfway into his living room/kitchen combo, heading for his phone, when he realizes there’s someone on his couch, and he almost shouts again before he realizes it’s Tim. He doesn’t realize it fast enough to not flinch back and hit the corner of his kitchen table with a thigh, though, which sets off a round of cursing as he clutches at it with his free hand.

Tim, curled into one corner of the couch, with his chin propped on one hand, comments, "That looked painful."

Jason lifts his head and glares, rubbing at the spot through his towel. "What the fuck are _these?_" he demands, gesturing at his side and bypassing the stupid comment entirely, because yeah, no shit it hurt.

The answer of, "Bindings," comes out idle. Like it doesn't matter. The tone doesn't change at all when he adds, "They tie my soul to yours, to keep it hidden."

Jason gapes, staring and utterly lost for words as Tim gets up off the couch and heads towards him. “It— I—” He finally manages to get out an incredulous, “They fucking _what?_” as Tim reaches him.

Except then Tim drops to his knees, reaching out and grabbing his hips over the towel, and every rational thought in his head deserts him all at once. Belatedly, he realizes that Tim isn’t in the suit anymore. He’s in the slacks still, but barefoot, and—

“Is that my shirt?” comes out of his mouth in something all too close to a croak, as he stares down at the pale expanse of collarbone and shoulder that his far too large shirt shows on Tim.

“Yeah. I borrowed it; I don’t have any other clothes yet.” Thumbs stroke up over the first inch of skin past the hem of the towel, and Jason very nearly chokes on his tongue, trying to take a step back. “These came out well,” Tim comments, effortlessly holding him in place. “I haven’t done one of these before, but I think it all went according to plan. All looks right, anyway.”

Jason swallows, clutching at the towel because he can’t think to do anything else. “What do you mean you haven’t done one before?”

“Well I learned about different kinds of bindings, but I’ve never done one before. Never had the chance."

"But you…” Jason feels interminably slow about piecing things together. "You said you'd done deals before, to stay here."

Tim lets go of him, rocking backwards and up in one smooth sway of motion Jason can only stare at. "Yeah, but not with humans. Just my kind. These only work with human souls.”

His fingers tighten on the towel, zeroing in on one other important fact from their last conversation. “_You _said you didn’t deal in souls,” he points out, eyes narrowing.

“I don’t! Your soul is just where it should be, still completely yours. You won’t even notice a difference.”

Won’t notice a difference? He’s got new fucking _tattoos_; that’s definitely not something he was going to just miss.

“Okay, that’s not true but whatever; that’s not the fucking point.” Jason waves his free hand at his side, and strangles his voice into something quieter than the shout it wants to be. “This is _not _what I agreed to!”

Tim shrugs, something sharp in his eyes even as his gaze drops, “Actually, you weren’t very specific about what you were agreeing to. I asked you to let me stay with you, and I did tell you about the hiding with a powerful soul thing, you just didn't ask how that worked.”

“You said it would be staying in my apartment!”

“_Like_ staying in your apartment.”

Jason strangles the urge to scream. "Binding your soul to mine isn't like being a roommate!"

It feels self-explanatory to him — how could it not? — but Tim only looks at his sides, and then back to him. "I mean, functionally it is. There won't be any adverse effects for you or anything, just me being around. Speaking of, you haven't got a guest room so is the couch fine for now? I'll pick up some clothes and things tomorrow, but if you've just got a couple blankets and an extra pillow I could borrow?”

The only reason he doesn't flail his hands all over the place is his death-grip on the towel, but he's well aware he sounds incredulous when he says, "No! You don't get to stay here!"

"Our deal says I can," Tim points out, stepping away and heading back to the couch. "Also, I mean, the deal wouldn't have stuck if you were agreeing to things outside the contract. So even if you didn't fully understand, you agreed to the idea. No lies; our deals won't bind if someone’s agreeing to a lie. You should probably ask for specifics next time.”

Jason glares as Tim sits back down on the couch. “There’s not going to be a next time!”

“Sure there is. I’m here, and temptation’s always hard for humans to resist.” A smile, charming and bright, and Jason’s mind puts a sudden new spin on ‘temptation’ even as Tim says, “Almost anything you want is just a few words away. Always for a fair price, and all you have to do is ask.”

He stalls out a little bit, the treacherous wheels of his mind spinning out of control and filling in the blanks of all of that. Everything he’s ever wanted. Every hope, every dream, every— No. _Fuck_, no. He doesn’t need to make fucking demon deals to get what he wants; that’s such a bad idea, it—

“Not so simple, is it?” Jason refocuses on Tim, watching him with just a little bit of a sharp edge. Then it fades, and he just seems oddly sincere. “I’m not here to sell you things. This is just… a vacation, for me? If you want to make other deals, I’ll be here, but that’s up to you. I’m not planning on any of that.”

“A vacation?” he repeats, feeling like he hasn’t been able to get steady footing this whole conversation. A deal that doesn’t mean what he thought it did, a demon suddenly in his apartment, but a demon that's on a vacation? Since when is this his _life?_

“Yeah. I told you that I was just making deals to be able to stay here, right? I like Earth. I’ve got studies and things to finish back home, but…” Tim waves a hand, makes a face. “They’ll keep. I’ll go back later.”

Jason’s brain makes some strange associations, and he’s a little too slow to stop himself from saying, “You’re taking a gap year?” He thinks, when his brain does catch up to his mouth, that the incredulity in his words is entirely fair. “What are you at, ‘demon college’?”

He’s not _actually _expecting the, “Yeah, more or less.” Tim shifts to the side, sprawling out along the length of his couch. “Anyway, I’ll go out and grab some stuff for myself tomorrow. But, definitely tomorrow. Lotta work, wiping your presence out of that bar. Tired.” A hand lifts, snapping fingers, and abruptly all his lights go out. “Night, Jason.”

Jason blinks owlishly into the sudden dark, the faint light from behind the curtains of his only window not giving his bright-ceiling-light adjusted eyes nearly enough to see by. He doesn’t— That’s not _fair_. Absolutely not fair to shut down a conversation by just declaring that he’s tired and magically turning off all the lights. What kind of—

Okay, deep breaths. No yelling, no cursing, no violence of any kind. It’s not going to help right now, and standing here still damp in nothing but a towel isn’t the best way to start a fight.

Besides, he’s got work in the morning, and even if there suddenly is a demon living in his apartment, that doesn’t mean he can just not work. Still bills and things to pay. That doesn’t stop for anything, not even irritating, short, pretty, jackass demons that have decided to take up residence on his couch.

Jason grits his teeth and turns away from what he assumes is the direction of the couch, scanning the dark till he finds the blinking light of his phone, where he left it on the counter. Slowly, he edges that direction, feeling with toes and his free hand to make sure he doesn’t crash into anything. He’s just going to get his phone, then go back to his own room and just forget about everything till the morning. Come at it with fresh eyes, or something.

And maybe find some kind of an exorcist.

**Author's Note:**

> [You can find my Tumblr here!](http://skalidra.tumblr.com/)


End file.
